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Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Prelude to Catastrophe

As we saw in the
previous posting on this subject, the adherents of the “democratic
religion” of socialism — which also encompassed what became known as modernism
and the New Age — became adamantine opponents of John Henry Newman and the
Oxford Movement when it became obvious that the tenets of the New Christianity
could in no way be reconciled with orthodox beliefs.As G.K. Chesterton would note a century or so
later, the “Hampden Affair” revealed the profound differences between traditional
religion (Orthodoxy, 1908) and the
invention of a new religion under the name of Christianity (Saint Francis of Assisi, 1923).

Chesterton: C of E as long as he could.

The Hampden Affair also led to development of the specific
strategy that would bring the Oxford Movement to an effective end as a force
for traditional Christianity and the restoration of a social order based on the
natural law.Newman had to be
eliminated, and the Broad Church (New Christian/socialist) faction knew exactly
how to do it: accuse Newman of being a secret papist.As R.W. Church explained the situation that
led to the downfall of Newman and the Movement,

The formation of a strong Romanizing section in the
Tractarian party was pro tanto a verification of the fundamental charge
against the party, a charge which on paper they had met successfully, but which
acquired double force when this paper defence was traversed by facts.But the divergence became clear only
gradually, and the hope that after all it was only temporary and would
ultimately disappear was long kept up by the tenacity with which Mr. Newman
still recognised the gifts and claims of the English Church.(Church, The Oxford Movement, op. cit.,
182 [edited].)

Despite the contention on the part of Catholics and
Anglicans that Newman exhibited doubts about the claims of the Church of
England, there is no real evidence to support it.Honest to a fault (if there can be such a
thing) Newman would instantly have resigned his “living” in the Church of
England the moment he had any doubt at all regarding the Church of England’s
validity — which in point of fact he did.

Young Mister Newman

The problem was that there were individuals in the Oxford
Movement who began looking at the program not as a way to restore the Church of
England, but to return to the Catholic Church.Since these individuals, as was the case with virtually everyone else in
the Movement, had been strongly influenced by Newman, they naturally gave the
impression that New thought exactly the way they did, even though there was no
evidence to support it.It did, however,
give the Broad Church party the ammunition they needed to convince the
suspicious Evangelical party that the ultimate goal of the Movement was reunion
with Rome.

This idea was communicated to the Oxford authorities as
well as to the hierarchy of the Church of England, both more political than
academic or religious, respectively.Objective truth of any religious doctrine or discipline was therefore
not as important as its political considerations — which was one of the chief
complaints of the Movement, e.g., the
elimination of the Irish bishoprics that began the effort in the first place.

Objectively speaking, the problem with the Oxford Movement
as far as the Broad Church faction was concerned was not that it was trying to
return to Rome, but to return the Church of England to orthodox Christian
belief.The accusation of Romanizing
was, frankly, just a useful tool to whip up panic among the Evangelicals and
worry among the hierarchy.Whether the Church
of England was Anglican or Catholic was a matter of complete indifference to
the New Christian Broad Church.

De Lamennais: hero of the New Christianity

What mattered was the fact that an effort was being made
to counter socialism, modernism, and the New Age, and the establishment and
maintenance of the Kingdom of God on Earth.As the work of Dr. Julian Strube of Heidelberg University has
demonstrated, this was the goal of “the democratic religion” of socialism,
modernism, and the New Age that was a new religion under the name of Christianity.

All that was needed was an excuse to launch a full scale
attack to bring down the Movement, and with someone as sincere and as honest as
Newman, that would be easy.In fact, it
was Newman himself who gave the Broad Church faction all the ammunition they
needed.

It revolved around the contention of Newman and others in
the Movement that the Church of England is Catholic, but not Roman.Whatever one thinks of this theory, the fact
remains that Newman and the others believed it, as do Anglo-Catholics to this
day.Newman’s Via Media argument remains a persuasive, even brilliant defense of
the theory.

It cannot be stressed enough that although Newman was in a
sense driven out of the Church of England as the result of the actions of the
Broad Church faction and the subservience of the Anglican hierarchy to the
government, nothing on Earth would have caused him to leave the communion into
which he had been born had he not been convinced that it was not completely true.

Ronald Knox

Yes, the machinations of the Broad Church faction
engineered the situation, but they could not engineer Newman’s commitment to
truth.This would also be the case with
other “high profile” conversions over the next century, notably Robert Hugh
Benson, Ronald A. Knox, and G.K. Chesterton.It also explains why William H. Mallock did not convert, although he may
have been on the verge when he died in 1923.

All of these converted to Catholicism because they became
convinced that while the Church of England has a great deal of the truth, something
convinced them that only the Catholic Church has the “fullness” (i.e., non-contradictory) of truth.Mallock did not convert because he continued
to believe, for all its faults and the distortions forced on it by the
socialists, modernists, and New Agers, the true doctrine of the Church of
England was orthodox.

Of course, while orthodoxy was the real issue, the Broad
Church faction had to divert it into other areas.This was because Evangelicals feared that
“Catholic” was de facto “Roman,” and
“Roman” meant “non-Christian” or worse.Even though Evangelicals were suspicious of the Broad Church faction —
justifiably so, as it turned out — they genuinely feared Rome.

R.W. Church

Thus, the Broad Church faction played on the fears of the
Evangelicals even though (or especially because) Evangelical Christianity was
much closer to Catholicism than it was to Broad Church latitudinarianism.What the Broad Church faction feared and
hated was orthodoxy, Anglican or Catholic, since their version of
“Christianity” often bore no resemblance to traditional Christianity in
fundamental assumptions.

It was at this point Newman made his fatal tactical error:
his attempt to reconcile the Thirty-Nine Articles with orthodox Christianity,
specifically the doctrines of the Catholic Church that, as Newman and others
claimed, were identical to those of the Church of England. Nor was this disingenuous as generations of
both Anglicans and Catholics have assumed.Newman believed with all his heart that, although his opinion of “Roman
Catholicism” had become somewhat less negative and the church headed by the
pope was in error, its doctrines, in common with the Church of England were
without error, despite differences in discipline.

The stage was set for what R.W. Church would call “the
Catastrophe” within the Church of England.